Elena Vanishing: A Memoir

Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.

Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn’t enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.

Madness: A Bipolar Life

When Marya Hornbacher published her acclaimed first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have a piece of shattering knowledge: the underlying reason for her distress. At age 24, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disease there is.

Lamont Crook says:"Forget Prozac Nation - this what it is really like"

Wintergirls

Lia and Cassie were best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies. But now Cassie is dead. Lia's mother is busy saving other people's lives.Her father is away on business. Her stepmother is clueless. And the voice inside Lia's head keeps telling her to remain in control, stay strong, lose more, weigh less. If she keeps on going this way - thin, thinner, thinnest - maybe she'll disappear altogether.

Skinny

Do you ever get hungry? Too hungry to eat? Holly's older sister, Giselle, is self-destructing. Haunted by her love-deprived relationship with her late father, this once strong role model and medical student, is gripped by anorexia. Holly, a track star, struggles to keep her own life in balance while coping with the mental and physical deterioration of her beloved sister. Together, they can feel themselves slipping and are holding on for dear life.

Paperweight

Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. In her life. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert. Life in the center is regimented and intrusive, a nightmare come true. Nurses and therapists watch Stevie at mealtime, accompany her to the bathroom, and challenge her to eat the foods she's worked so hard to avoid.

Sober Stick Figure: A Memoir

Sober Stick Figure is a memoir from stand-up comedian Amber Tozer, chronicling her life as an alcoholic - starting with her first drink at the age of seven - and her eventual recovery. Amber writes about the crazy and harsh truths of being raised by alcoholics, becoming one herself, stagnating in denial for years, and finally getting sober.

The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez

Decades after Richard Ramirez left 13 dead and paralyzed the city of Los Angeles, his name is still synonymous with fear, torture, and sadistic murder. Philip Carlo's classic The Night Stalker, based on years of meticulous research and extensive interviews with Ramirez, revealed the killer and his horrifying crimes to be even more chilling than anyone could have imagined. The story of Ramirez is a bizarre and spellbinding descent into the very heart of human evil.

Skinny

Hopeless. Freak. Elephant. Pitiful. These are the words of Skinny, the vicious voice that lives inside 15-year-old Ever Davies's head. Skinny tells Ever all the dark thoughts her classmates have about her. Ever knows she weighs over 300 pounds, knows she'll probably never be loved, and Skinny makes sure she never forgets it. But there is another voice: Ever's singing voice, which is beautiful but has been silenced by Skinny. Ever decides to undergo a risky surgery that may help her lose weight and start over.

The Ministry of Thin: How Our Obsession with Weight Loss Got Out of Control

Losing weight has become the modern woman’s Holy Grail.… Everything will be better when we’re thin. In the 21st century, being thin, even more than being rich or happy, sends a clear message of success to the outside world. No wonder then that disordered eating is on the rise and we’re increasingly unhappy with our bodies. The Ministry of Thin takes a controversial, unflinching look at how our desire to lose weight is out of control; at the widespread depression that results, the tyranny of celebrity culture and the dangerous extremes - including drip-diets and cosmetic surgery - to which we will go to be skinny.

Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl

Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.

Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was "the gasoline of all adventure." She spent her evenings at cocktail parties and dark bars where she proudly stayed till last call. Drinking felt like freedom, part of her birthright as a strong, enlightened 21st-century woman. But there was a price. She often blacked out, waking up with a blank space where four hours should be. Mornings became detective work on her own life. A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor, Blackout is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure - the sober life she never wanted.

Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction

Dr. Peter Grinspoon seemed to be a total success: a Harvard-educated MD with a thriving practice; married with two great kids and a gorgeous wife; a pillar of his community. But lurking beneath the thin veneer of having it all was an addict fueled on a daily boatload of prescription meds. When the police finally came calling - after a tip from a sharp-eyed pharmacist - Grinspoon's house of cards came tumbling down fast.

Drunk Mom: A Memoir

A best seller in its native Canada, Drunk Mom is a gripping, brutally honest memoir of motherhood in the shadow of alcoholism. Three years after giving up drinking, Jowita Bydlowska found herself throwing back a glass of champagne like it was ginger ale. It was a special occasion: a party celebrating the birth of her first child. It also marked Bydlowska's immediate, full-blown return to crippling alcoholism.

Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction

From the moment she uttered the brave and honest words, "I am an alcoholic," to interviewer George Stephanopoulos, Elizabeth Vargas began writing her story, as her experiences were still raw. Now, in Between Breaths, Vargas discusses her accounts of growing up with anxiety - which began suddenly at the age of six when her father served in Vietnam - and how she dealt with this anxiety as she came of age, to her eventually turning to alcohol for relief.

Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster

The two-time Emmy Award-winning actress has written her first book, a surprisingly raw and triumphant memoir that is outrageous, moving, sweet, tragic, and heartbreakingly honest. Guts is a true triumph - a memoir that manages to be as frank and revealing as Augusten Burroughs, yet as hilarious and witty as David Sedaris.

John Campbell says:"Whiskey and cigarettes have never sounded so good."

Straight Pepper Diet: A Memoir

Joseph W. Naus was living the American dream. He'd survived a brutal childhood, graduated from Pepperdine Law School, and become a successful attorney. Then one night his American dream life became a nightmare when his sex and alcohol addictions collided and exploded. "On Tuesday I was a respected civil trial lawyer making six-figures. On Wednesday I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed, charged with attempted murder...and then it got worse."

It Was Me All Along: A Memoir

All her life, Andie Mitchell had eaten lustily and mindlessly. Food was her babysitter, her best friend, her confidant, and it provided a refuge from her fractured family. But when she stepped on the scale on her 20th birthday and it registered a shocking 268 pounds, she knew she had to change the way she thought about food and herself; that her life was at stake.

Publisher's Summary

Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve.

Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live.

Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.

In “Wasted,” Marya Hornbacher’s battle with her body is nothing short of epic, but unlike a true epic it is far from heroic. Hornbacher is the unlikely antagonist in her own life story, hating her body to the very brink of death. “Wasted” captures every dramatic, painful and often repulsive detail. If you can bear to look at it, you will glimpse in raw form the gruesome reality of eating disorders. There is no glamor here. There is hunger, vomit, blood and bones.

This abridged version of “Wasted,” read by Hornbacher herself, is so seamless that I did not even realize it was abridged until I discovered this fact in another listener’s review. Hornbacher is the perfect narrator. No other reader could get this story so right.

If you are hoping for a happy ending, Hornbacher advises you to look elsewhere. She denies the existence of a happy ending to her story, claiming that the best one can hope for in the end is simply “letting go.”

But here is a secret – many years have passed since this book was written. During those years Hornbacher continued to struggle with her eating disorder, and she came face to face with a terrible mental illness that left her grasping for sanity and hope (see “Madness: A Bipolar Life). In the end, she managed to do better than just let go. She conquered and overcame. And, lucky for the rest of us, she lived to write about it.

I love this book, so I jumped at the chance to hear the author read it. I do wish it was unabridged, however, as there are some really good, key parts that are missing--things I really wanted to hear her say.

This is a subject every caring person should try to understand. Having know bulemics I cared about I have tried to understand - but still do not. This book brings me closer to an understanding. However, the insight is only a feeling and a glimpse.

Marya's writing reminds me of Mary Karr (Liar's Club and Cherry). At times the narrative becomes poetry. It is a pleasure to listen to at the same time as the content makes one mad.

This is another illustration of the superiority of audio books. I have not attempted to read this book, but I confidently predict that it is many times more powerful to hear Marya tell you the story in her own words. Like Mary Carr, Bill Bryson and many others, hearing an author read their own words adds an extra dimension and, in the case of Mary and Marya, can elevate the book to a different plane.

I've read this book atleast 3 times. The book itself is written to not keep any part of bulimia or anorexia hidden. It explains all and every feeling imagined and felt. When I had the chance to download this book with Marya's own voice reading her own words, it was a chance to listen to how she speaks. Her words, sometimes haunts, sometimes makes me speak outloud to nobody, saying things like, "Yes, that's true." It's an amazing book to have on audio. Download this book, and listen to it. You'll be glad you did.

If you're like me and you find mental illness fascinating this is a really well written first person account of what it's like to struggle with Anorexia Nervosa. It's interesting to see how an eating disorder begins and spirals out of control.

I saw a documentary with this author recently where she stated that she was young when she wrote this book and it triggered her eating disorder. Perhaps that is why there are many people who consider this entire book a trigger and have mixed emotions about it. I'd be interested to read her take on the events now, many years later, as recovered as anyone could be.

This was a really interesting memoir, with a real insider's view of the anorexia and bulemia. I have never had an eating disorder, so I have always wondered what could drive a person to commit a long, torturous suicide in this way. I felt I had learned something after listening to this book, while also being entertained from beginning to end. I almost wish there was a follow-up memoir to find out what happens to her later in life.

This is not suppose to be an uplifting book, this is suppose to be a book to show the honest truth of the thoughts, actions and feelings of those that have Eating Disorders. Having suffered myself I related to some of what she said although mine was no where as severe as hers. What Marya does is describe it in such a way that whether or not you have suffered any type of disordered eating you will feel that you are her, that you are going through what she is going through. Eating disorders are not how books with simple "warning signs" are about. It's what goes on in your head and Marya describes it so honestly and perhaps what people don't really want to know.

Into the life of an anorexic, bulimic. For those of us who can't imagine a compulsion to starve it is almost incomprehsible. I was struck by how functional the writer was even during her worst times..Excelling in theatre, writing and more...She doesn't give herself enough credit for that. I think all mothers of teen girls should make time for this story..there is a lot to learn regarding what NOT to do and say to our daughters..

Such a heart-rending memoir, but such a favourite of mine. It has all the poetic beauty of Plath and the gritty realism of Irivine Welsh. Thank you, Marya, for sharing your story and letting us know we're not alone.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Joshua

10/29/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Fascinating Story, Beautifully Read by the Author"

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

The book offers a unmatched look inside the mind of a person with an eating disorder, and the consequences that follow.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Wasted?

There are moments where you can see right into the mind of the author, and you can feel the full range of her emotions, her pain, her desire to live. You will understand her and not understand her at the very same time.

What about Marya Hornbacher’s performance did you like?

Read with character and conviction, so full of life. Only the author could give such a convincing performance/

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Chlay

United Kingdom

12/23/12

Overall

"Raw, damaged and beautiful autobiography"

This is my favourite of the year.I listen to it3x a week.

It's brutally honest,raw&was clearly painful to write about yet is so eye opening,it draws you in and shows how poetic destruction can be.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Miss

LONDON, United Kingdom

9/30/12

Overall

"Brilliant"

The only thing better than reading Wasted is having Marya Hornbacher read Wasted to you. She is a natural storyteller.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Carol

CHELTENHAM, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, United Kingdom

7/7/09

Overall

"Quite an eye opener!"

Ok when you fancy a bit of a different track from chick lit! Scary but not so very rare story these days. Food for thought!

0 of 3 people found this review helpful

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